


Is Person 1 of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish Origin?

by zephyrprince



Category: Glee
Genre: Biracial Character, Bisexual Character, Bisexual Character of Color, Bisexual Female Character, Canon Bisexual Character, Canon Queer Character of Color, Canon Queer Relationship, Census, Chicano Character, Femslash, Gen, High School, Latinidad, Latino Character, Mexican-American character, Ohio, Original Characters - Freeform, Parents, Peruvian character, Queer Character of Color, Race, Season/Series 01, Standardized Tests, Tejano character, Texas, US Source, bisexual woman of color, latina character, queer female character, queer woman of color, spanglish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-25
Updated: 2010-08-25
Packaged: 2017-10-11 06:17:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/109335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zephyrprince/pseuds/zephyrprince
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now we know the census is very important...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Is Person 1 of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish Origin?

"Okay, Brit. Now we know that the census is very important," Santana said sitting down at one of the lunch tables in the McKinley cafeteria. The two girls opened the envelopes that had arrived at their homes the previous week and laid the contents flat on the table. Santana very deliberately took a black bic from her pencil pouch; her blonde companion produced a blue pen whose shape curved and curled towards the top, ending in a small pompom creature with googly eyes. She displayed it wide-eyed with a playful smile. Santana nodded, lips pursed, and returned to her thought.

"The census is very important, particularly for the Latino community," her neck flounced as she spoke with so much pride and self-assurance. "This is how we count people to determine seats in the House of Representatives and how a whole bunch of federal money gets distributed for hospitals and stuff AND so that businesses know how many of us there are to advertise to," she said, adding the last bit with not a touch of irony.

The two women proceeded to fill out the forms for their households, starting with their parents' names and genders. Soon, however, where Brittany continued to race through the survey, pompomed pen bobbing along, Santana stopped, having hit a snag.

The questions she had come to concerned race and ethnicity. It was clear enough that she should mark the Hispanic heritage box, but what about race? And how, in addition, might she indicate her mixed race household? Did they not want to know about that?

Santana vaguely understood that most of the students at McKinley High would not have identified her as biracial. Most of the citizens of Lima, in fact, thought of her very simply as Hispanic; maybe a few would have said Latina, and several of her less worldly and less sensitive peers called her plainly a Mexican.

Of course they were partially correct. Her father was Mexican-American, though Justin Lopez would hardly have identified himself as Mexican per se. His family had been in the US for longer than anyone could remember, and the recent generations were much more culturally anchored in El Paso than anywhere across the Rio Grande. Justin was a Tejano through and through, dressed always in his uniform of blue jeans, boots and cowboy hat and accented with a well-groomed moustache. His two passions were trucks and music, which he combined daily at his Chrysler dealership by serenaded potential buyers with the music of his youth – Espejismo or Jimmy Gonzalel y El Grupo Mazz or others.

Her mother, on the other hand, could not have been more different. Kantu hailed from Peru and was happy, albeit perplexed, to have ended up in this other Lima. She was hard as stone, always practical, and as efficient in her work at the dealership as she was in the kitchen or out in the garden behind the Lopez split-level. Quechua was not her first language, but it was comfortable for her, and she'd use it on the long phone calls with her sisters when she was particularly scandalized or if she didn't want her kids to overhear.

Santana clinched her pen and considered her options. White. No. Black, African Am., or Negro. Her eyebrow twitched at the last of these. American Indian or Alaskan Native. Definitely not. And then a whole bunch of Asian-American categories.

She ran through it again but just didn't see herself on there. It wasn't the first time she'd faced such a problem. As she looked up again, stumped from a third go at the options, a memory of her third grade self crept into her mind. That had been the year they'd moved north and she found herself taking the Ohio Achievement Test for the first time. The week before her teacher had distributed a practice copy so they could get used to bubbling in the scantron forms with just the right amount of pressure from their #2 pencils. When the teacher came around to collect them at the end of the period, however, Santana hadn't filled out a single answer. She was stumped by the initial demographic questions, not having any idea what to put for race.

That afternoon she went home despondent, a fact that did not escape the attention of Kantu even as she held her square shoulder up, tending a pot of beans on the too high stove.

"Mi hija…" She looked up into the pot and then back at her daughter, "¿Qué pasó?

"Mommy, for a test at school, what do I put as our race?"

"Hija, you put whatever is going to take you the farthest."

Kantu was completely satisfied by this answer, breathing out and returning to her stirring, but Santana was unsure what that meant.

Later when her father was tuning his guitar in the living room, preparing for their traditional after dinner sing along, she went to him with the same question.

"Santana, a lot of people try to call us a lot of things – Latino, Hispanic, Mexican, and wetbacks and Beeners and spicks. But if anybody wants to know what my race is, I tell 'em I'm from Atzlan, a proud Chicano American!"

This, at least, was a solid answer, but the third grade girl was bewildered when Chicano wasn't one of her options the next week.

She waited a moment and when the proctor told them to open their test booklets and begin the questions, she panicked. Impulsively, Santana marked Hispanic Non-White, and she'd stuck with it for the most part ever since.

What was different here, however, was that, if she wanted, she could write her own answer. She hadn't had much contact with the word Chicano since her dad had pulled it on her from that young age. She suspected he hadn't had too much contact with it either. She wasn't sure what her mother meant, maybe thinking about their indígena roots or suggesting relative merit analysis of marking something like "multi-racial," which _was_ a term she felt described her. But what did she really feel? And how would the Census Bureau respond?

Santana closed her eyes for a moment and puffed out a quick exhale. She pulled the rubberband out of her hair and redid her pony tail. She pulled lip gloss from her pencil pouch and reapplied. She subtly adjusted her Cheerios skirt and then took her pen back up and swiftly wrote in "Latina" to the open-ended response box.

That's what they asked and that's what she felt, and who was this person who was got so weighed down? The whole affair made her feel distinctly not like herself. Reflective and brooding – please.

For each member of her family she wrote in "Latina" and "Latino." She cared not at all if the feminine ending caused errors and certainly not that she'd already indicated they were Hispanic on a separate question. Who even designed this thing?

Brit, lets go get protein bars.

"Wait, is person 8 of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin?"

"Brittany, there aren't eight people in your family."

"Is that a no?"

Santana leaned over and gave Brittany a peck on the cheek, "I'm over this." The two girls smiled at each other and abandoned their forms in their bags, locking arms to leave.

**Author's Note:**

> Despite my research, I have yet to determine if the Ohio Achievement Test actually asks third graders their race. My vague recollection of similar standardized tests I took as a child was that they did and that I, like Santana, did not know what to put for years, eventually settling on Hispanic Non-White, but I'd be curious to know about that age and about the OAT in particular if anyone knows.


End file.
